If you’re into creative hobbies like knitting, sculpting, or jewelry-making, you may have thought about selling your pieces. Maybe you’ve sold some to friends, or sold at local shows. Online stores on Etsy or Storenvy, though, can help expand your customer base. There are plenty of guides and tutorials to setting up an online store, but as a college student, there are extra things to think about.
I started selling jewelry online in my freshman year, after a lifetime of doing it just for fun and craft, so this is based on my experience.
1. In a dorm, you have to think about space. In my freshman year, I lived with a roommate in a standard two-person dorm room, and my only room to work was my desk— which also housed my laptop, homework, pens and paperclips, and so on, leaving me approximately one square foot of workspace. It limits the amount of materials that you can actually see at once, which means it can be hard to actually think about what you have and what you can do with it, which can limit your creative potential. It wasn’t until junior year that I had a full-sized table to work on, which helped a lot with the output.
2. Balancing schoolwork with this work can be super difficult. Most people who sell their handiwork online have other jobs, but so do many students, so there’s, even more, to focus on. It can be easy to neglect crafting to focus on the things that are more important in the long run, and it’s fine to drop it altogether for a while, but don’t let your quality drop.
3. Costs build up super quickly, so if you don’t have a lot of money or don’t have much other income, it might not be worth it at the moment. That doesn’t mean that you should stop altogether, it just means that online selling might not be the best choice.
4. People might not respect you as an artist or worker, more so than usual. Everyone is doing their own thing and a lot of people are doing what they consider “real work,” which shows that they don’t really understand what you do. Some people will say weird things, like the guy who told me that one of the necklaces I made looked like something from Yu-Gi-Oh. People also might think that you’re wasting your time, because if you’re majoring in, say, chemistry, why are you selling knitted hats? Don’t let it get to you.
5. Getting rewarded for your creativity is rewarding in itself. College is a time to find yourself and find out what you love to do, so this should be a part of that as much as it is a source of income and a creative outlet.
